but not what they do. live from washington, this is bbc news. welcome to viewers on pbs in america the us investigates the leaking of dozens of intelligence document, including details of training and weaponry for ukraine. one tennesee lawmaker reinstated days after he and a colleague were expelled for calling for stricter gun control laws. and taiwan hits back at china after it completes three days of military exercises around the island. hello, i'm sumi somaskanda. we begin here in washington, where us national security officials are trying to contain the fallout of a major document leak,

including some top secret material. the documents first appeared on online platforms such as twitter, lichan and telegram, as well on the messaging platform discord. the leak reveals information about the deployment and state of ukrainian and russian forces ahead of a ukrainian spring offensive and appear to outline us training and equipment being provided to ukraine ahead of that offensive. there are also suggestions that ukraine's air force may not be able to withstand more russian attacks. other leaked material included intelligence on other countries such as china, israel, and south korea. officials say they do not currently know the source of the leaks. the bbc�*s barbara plett usher has more. the pentagon says the us is still very much in the finding—out phase. we are told that this is a serious risk to us national security and that it is a matter of top priority. a number of government agencies are working together to try to find out how this happened and what the potential impact is.

the secretary of defence is meeting every day with senior leaders and us officials are holding high—level talks to try to reassure allies because a number of these documents mentioned us allies such as israel and south korea, including some very sensitive information but most of the documents referred to the status of the war in ukraine. the department of justice has opened up a criminal investigation. the americans do not know who is behind this or at least they are not saying. they also do not know the scope of it. a spokesman for the national security council was asked whether the threat had been contained and he said, "well, we just do not know." these are not detailed ukraine battle plans, this is more like a us snapshot of the ukraine war but it could give the russians useful information. it could also put at risk some of the us intelligence sources and it is a diplomatic embarrassment. officials say these documents are — for the most part — real. but earlier, the white house's john kirby also said this.

it does appear that at least in some cases, the information posted online had been altered from what we think would be the original source, but there is just no way i could tell you with any granularity right now how that came to be. i spoke with the chairman of the us house intelligence committee, representative mike turner, who was briefed on the leak. i do think that there is a way and we certainly are, through the department ofjustice and through the department of defence, trying to track this down. certainly, the documents have limited circulation. they have been appearing in photographs, some of which of course have electronic signature aspects that can help us lead to where this leak may have occurred, where these documents have come from. and of course our goal there is to stop it. but you are absolutely right in your report, you guys were saying that this is just a limited snapshot. it is a static image

of the ukraine conflict. it is not at all something that is dynamic. our ability to be flexible, ukraine's ability to be flexible in its attempts to rebuff the russian aggression against them is certainly not stopped by this. it is a static image but it does also reveals some important information about the war in ukraine. one of the revelations is that ukraine's air force may not be able to stand up to russia should they intensify air battles. we know that the biden administration has now promised another $2.6 billion aid package, including some support for air defence. is that going to be enough? even that is static. what you're referring to is the document that was talking about the consumption rate of air defences and what the status would be over time for those, but, again, that isjust of a period of time. we are continuing and the nato allies are continuing to supply both weapons and capabilities that would backfill those capabilities, so russia should not by any

means look at these documents and think, hey, as of this date we now have freedom to be able to move into and about ukraine. that is not the case. i wasjust in ukraine and meeting with our nato allies and out officials there on both logistics, planning and on training, and there is a great deal of effort and support for ukraine and these documents i think show the extent of the continued cooperation and co—ordination but certainly would not be representative of all ability. we also saw the new york times reporting the russian mercenary group wagner — they have been fighting against ukraine of course — met with turkish contacts as a part of a bid to expand their influence and also to search in part for more weapons. what do you make of them meeting with contacts from a nato member state? i am not going to comment on that. again, some of those documents have not being verified, i'm certainly not going to discuss aspects like that.

but i think what you point though and your question, which is discussable, is, are the russians out looking for weapons and that clearly is the case. we saw when president xi came to russia, that they are looking for chinese weapons, we know that they have been looking around the world for weapons and i think that shows a greater vulnerability on the part of russia that they would prefer that people not understand and that is that they are running out of weapons, they are running out of capabilities and certainly, since they are not able to advance their eastern frontline against ukraine, it is certainly showing failure on the part of the russian military. is it also showing that sanctions from the west are working? absolutely. that is an excellent point. the sanctions prevent them from having access to advanced technology that they can incorporate into additional weapons that they can manufacture themselves

and also it lessens their overall capital that they could apply to the manufacturing of weapons capabilities. but it also goes to the issue of just the unbelievable consumption that is happening of their weapons systems, the number of tanks they have lost is unbelievable and certainly was not expected by putin. their whole weapons system, they are seeing they are much less effective than they had expected. another aspect of this, even though we're talking about the united states leaking of classified information, we have certainly seen that russia, almost like a sieve — putin has to be sitting there at times looking to his left and right, and wondering who his friends are because the information that comes out of russia is so actionable and it's certainly helped the ukrainian and nato and the united states. i want to come back to the state of play in the war in ukraine right now because even though you have said this is a static shot of what is happening, what is the impact of these leaks? what can russian intelligence, for example, gain from these documents? there is some information

in this that could be concerning and that could be viewed as strategic information but what we have to be concerned with is, again, making certain that ukraine and its plans over the next couple of months is flexible, that it has that versatility and that weapons capabilities that nato and nato allies and the us provide — we know certainly of the german leopard tanks that are on their way — are being sort of put to their best use. so as this information is out, certainly ukraine is going to have to modify and look to its plans. but, again, this is a land war and as a land war, a lot of — anything that happens on the ground is visible to russia and they are going to have some advanced notice of these events anyway, but this certainly causes pause and i think a reconfiguration of perhaps the goals and objectives. and certainly a big intelligence leak. does there need to be a review of who has clearances for these types of documents, who has access?

this certainly is very concerning that these documents would have been leaked. there certainly is an inventory of and understanding of who has access to them. we are going to be working diligently to find who would have had these documents and who might have leaked them in this situation. certainly this is espionage and if it turns out to be american, they are a traitor and they will be held to justice. while we have you here i also want to ask you about china because we have seen chinese warships essentially encircle taiwan in a response to the taiwanese president meeting with the house speaker, kevin mccarthy, here in the us. china said it has successfully completed three days of military drills. what do you make of that? it continues to show that as an authoritarian regime, they are threatening taiwan which is a thriving democracy. it certainly was startling to everyone that when china reacted to nancy pelosi as a speaker going to taiwan and then now is reacting to the president of taiwan meeting in the united states with the speaker of the us house in the united states, so clearly they see their

reach, their ability to have a fence or a pretext for these exercises and these really provocative moves as threatening to them and clearly the freedom part of being able to be free and meet with whoever you want they certainly do not understand. that may be the case but if we see these type of provocative military drills, as you've just called them, is there perhaps some room to reconsidering these types of meetings if they are going to trigger that kind of response from china? there is no triggering of china. china has been planning this for a long time and they have openly stated so. president xi has been saying that he wanted his military to plan to even if necessary to take taiwan from military force. this is all a pretext. certainly in the united states we can't start saying people who are in the united states that we're not going to meet with them because we might offend china.

that is not the issue here. the issue here is that china is an authoritarian regime and they are going to try to suppress democracies, including actions in our own country. chairman of the house intelligence committee, mike turner. thank you so much for joining us on the show. thank you for having me. turning to the state of tennessee where the nashville metropolitan council voted to reappoint justinjones to the tennessee house of representatives. he's one of two state lawmakers who were expelled from the republican—majority house last week, after participating in a gun control protest on the house floor. he's returning to his seat as an interim representative until an election is held. tell us about the environment inside and outside of the council chamber? today was pretty intense. they were thousands of people gathered at the metro court house.

as many people as could be fit into the council chamber and reporters from all over and everybody hopeful the council would do the right thing. and we did. what is your message to those who voted to expel your two colleagues? when both representativejones and pearson were expelled from the house, i saw a lot of tweets on social media saying democracy is dead and i think the council vote today proves that democracy is still very much alive and the actions that happened last week undemocratic and people have a right to representation. i want to ask about a statement from republican leaders. it came in from leaders of the state general assembly, republicans who said...

would you encourage them to try to follow the rules to avoid this type of thing happening again? representative jones and representative pearson are activists. whne their constituents voted for them they knew who they were, they wanted representatives who were unapologetic and speak for the people. i think they need to be and will be true to themselves. i do not think they need to change. everyone who watched last week knows the expulsion was an overreach and i think how they have been catapulted into the international and national stage proves they are doing the right thing and they are on the right track and don't need to change. would you encourage them holding a protest as they did on the floor of the house was mike representativejones on the floor of the house? representative jones talked about how he took an oath issues that

were interested to his constituents. that is exactly what he did. the message may be loud but you have to look at the actual message and he was speaking for his constituents so i would encourage any legislator to always speak for their constituents and the constituents of the district felt they were not being heard and silenced on issues about gun violence in our society so representative jones doing what he promised what he would do, represent them and amplify their voices so if you find himself in that situation again, we has to amplify the voices of his constituents, i would encourage him to do so. it is not about always following the rules. of course we want to follow the rules and have decorum but sometimes you have to speak out for people. kyonzte toombs thank you forjoining us here on our programme. kwantay toomes speaking to us there, lawmaker in the tennessee house of representatives. let's get more on taiwan now. its president says china's

military exercises have caused instability and are not the responsible attitude of a major country. china just completed three days of military drills around the island, though the taiwan defense minister says there are still eight military ships operating in waters around the island. taiwan is a self—ruled island off the coast of china, which beijing sees it as part of its own territory. china called these drills a "stern warning", after the taiwanese president, tsai ing—wen, visited the us and met house speaker kevin mccarthy. i spoke to our correspondent joao da silva. tell us more about these military drills china says it has completed. they are essentially i understand simulated circling the island. exactly. it seems that for the first time the chinese military has simulated strikes from the east, or pacific side rather than the west, where china's mainland is. that means that they practised encircling the island, notjust that, taiwan's defence ministry released a map showing the flight maps of chinese fighterjets to the island's

east, suggesting one of the jets took off from one of china's two aircraft carriers. china has confirmed that the shandong aircraft carrier, currently deployed in the pacific, not too far from taiwan, has been involved in the drills and the japanese military said jet fighters and helicopters took off and landed on the carrier 120 times between friday and sunday, so all this seems to indicate that they were simulating a blockade. taiwan says it will stick to its posts but do you think these military drills will cause taiwan to rethink holding meetings with us lawmakers when it sees that kind of response from china? that's hard to say, but if the aim is to deter us and taiwanese politicians from getting closer, it achieved a bit of success. this time around taiwan appears to have ta ken steps to really reduce tensions around that meeting between president tsai like and kevin mccarthy.

lastjuly, mr mccarthy said he'd like to lead a congressional delegation to taiwan if he became the house speaker, but according to reports, the tsai really managed to convince him to meet in the us instead, because of because of taiwan's security concerns. the us has also tried to downplay the meeting, pointing out that it was president tsai's seventh transit since taking part. both the us and taiwan have described it as a stopover or transit rather than a visit. still, call them official visits or not, these meetings have been going ahead under president tsai. but there is an election coming up on taiwan and we can't say what will happen if the election saw more beijing—friendly governments really come to power in taiwan. around the world and across the uk.

this is bbc news. james badger has committed to raiding 1600 kilometres, the length of the uk, over the course of eight days, in memory of his late wife, philippa. philippa said she was feeling a little _ philippa said she was feeling a little bit — philippa said she was feeling a little bit tired, a bit fatigued, and wasn't so well the next _ fatigued, and wasn't so well the next day and went to see our gp, — the next day and went to see our gp, and very sadly found out she — our gp, and very sadly found out she had acute myeloid leukaemia. started chemotherapy and blood transfusion straightaway but very sadly within _ straightaway but very sadly within 36 hours, philippa died. 0ver— within 36 hours, philippa died. over time, _ within 36 hours, philippa died. overtime, he decided within 36 hours, philippa died. over time, he decided something good had to come out of philippa's southern death. the first anniversary, james and france will begin their route to raise money for blood cancer uk. ., , ., _ . to raise money for blood cancer uk. ., ':::: uk. he has gone cycling 100 times may _ uk. he has gone cycling 100 times may be _ uk. he has gone cycling 100 times may be in _ uk. he has gone cycling 100 times may be in like - uk. he has gone cycling 100 times may be in like a - uk. he has gone cycling 100 times may be in like a year. | times may be in like a year. the — times may be in like a year. the survival— times may be in like a year. the survival rate _ times may be in like a year. the survival rate for - times may be in like a year. the survival rate for acute l the survival rate for acute myeloid leukaemia isjust10%. myeloid leukaemia is just 10%.

research myeloid leukaemia isjust10%. research could improve that. a family team working together, determined to make a difference. you're live with bbc news. to kentucky now — where police have identified the gunman who killed four people in louisville as 23—year old connor sturgeon. police say he was killed at the scene of the attack — at a bank in louisville. at least six more people have been injured and taken to hospitals, after the incident in the east main street near slugger field stadium. our correspondent jessica parker has more. so details have been emerging through the day in a series of press briefings about the shooting this morning. we are told officers were called to the scene at around about half past eight in the morning. there was an exchange of fire between police and the suspect. the suspect died. now what we're also told is the—year—old suspect had been live streaming the incident, and had worked at the incident, and had worked at the bank as well. now during the bank as well. now during the shooting, one of those injured was a police officer,

who we heard later today had been struck in the head, and had had to undergo brain surgery as a result and was in a critical condition, and had onlyjust graduated recently from the police academy. so is a very sad human stories emerging from those press briefings today, and of course the governor of kentucky is well talking about his personal connections, and that he had known one of the people who have died. in terms of the ongoing investigation, we are told it could take some time, that officers were likely to be at the scene for some hours yet. there has been some political reaction. president joe biden tweeted tonight... chiel is of course his wife. -- jill is

——jill is of —— jill is of course this way. the safe communities act was passed last year, a bipartisan piece of legislation, seen as a landmark moment but it didn't ban any weapons. what it did was invest in crisis intervention, and upgrading school security, tough and some background checks but the biden administration has talked about wanting to ban assault weapons, something that others are reluctant to do, of course this largely falls along party lines. some republicans reticent to tighten gun controls in certain areas. there is of course the argument of those who are very protective of their second amendment rights. they say that if criminals are armed with weapons, and of course many, many guns are in circulation in the united states, than ordinary seasons may be need to be as well. so i don't think we are expecting any big political changes after today's tragic events but this debate of course keeps on running. the world's top economic leaders are converging on washington to discuss the state of the global economy and the war in ukraine. the world bank and the international monetary fund

are hosting their spring meetings this week — bringing together finance ministers from around the world. our business correspondent samira hussain has been following the discussions. around the world, central bankers are raising interest rates to try and slow down those price increases. as a result, however, we have some of the weakest growth projections by the international monetary fund since the 1990s. now, with the world's finance ministers and central bankers all meeting in washington this week, the increasingly fragile global economy will certainly be the focus, along with ways for countries to try and mitigate some of the negative impacts of those interest rate rises. now, the high inflation, however, is already having an impact on poorer countries, pushing them further into financial distress. given the uncertain global economic outlook, the imf believes many more countries will be looking to the imf for help. in other news,

the us secretary of state antony blinken has formally determined that russia wrongfully detained the wall streetjournal reporter, evan gershkovich, suggesting the charges against him are politically motivated. wrongful detention status allows the us to allocate more resources to the case. the us government has applied for an emergency stay on a ruling by a conservative texas judge suspending approval of the abortion pill, mifepristone. the us authorities say it's been used for more than 20 years and is safe. to northern ireland now, where it's the 25th anniversary of the good friday agreement. it brought an end to decades of conflict in northern ireland, known as the troubles. there were bombings, shootings, and more than 3,500 people died. unionists wanted northern ireland to stay within the uk while nationalists wanted it to become part of the republic of ireland. the good friday agreement was signed on the 10th of april 1998 and approved by public votes in northern ireland and the republic of ireland. it resulted in a new government for northern ireland,

representing both nationalists and unionists. and northern ireland and the republic of ireland are preparing for president biden�*s arrival on tuesday. he touches down in belfast on tuesday evening on air force one — his first official visit here as president. he is set to give a keynote speech at belfast�*s ulster university, before heading to the republic of ireland, where he has ancestral roots. it's not his first visit to the area — biden retraced his roots to mayo and louth on a previous trip in 2016. charlotte gallagher reports. belfast is really gearing up at the moment for the arrival of us presidentjoe biden. and actually, on the street below me is the hotel where he's going to be staying.

and already, the cordons are out so people can't park there and we think the security cordon will be in place tomorrow morning around the hotel, then around the university he will go to on wednesday to meet people. that's his only public engagement here in northern ireland before he moves south into republic. i think it's about a celebration of the good friday agreement, why he is coming here, but also looking forward to the future as well. that's why he is going to the university and meeting people who weren't even born during the troubles. they don't remember the violence which marred the lives of people and killed thousands of people here in northern ireland. afterjoe biden has been in northern ireland he will move to the south, to dublin where he will meet the president and prime minister, the taoiseach, and will go to county louth and county mayo, where he has ancestral links. this will be a homecoming forjoe biden in many ways and i think the fact that he is doing his last engagement in the town of ballina, where his great—great—grandfather is from, he has cousins there, he will be speaking at the cathedral on friday night, that says a lot about him and his feelings towards ireland. he describes himself as a proud irish—american, proud irish catholic, and it is obviously incredibly important to him, those

roots in the country. stay with us here on bbc news. hello. tuesday will be a day which some of you will have to make the most of the morning weather, because it'll be a day in which conditions will be rapidly deteriorating, with wet weather spreading to many areas from the south and west, and by the end of the day will be increasingly windy, especially around some western coasts and hills. an area of low pressure approaching now, but in the night into the morning got a brief ridge of high pressure, quite a shallow one, so still a few showers into the morning, but a lot of dry and clear weather and a colder start of the morning as well. even a touch of frost through sheltered scottish glens. but whilst there will be some cloud in scotland, one or two showers, many start fine and bright. lots of sunshine around. make the most of it.

south—west england, south—west wales and south—west northern ireland deteriorate rapidly through the morning, that rain spreading to the rest of northern ireland, wales and western england for the end of the afternoon with strengthening winds. temperatures down a bit on today but given the strength of the wind and the rain spreading in, it will feel cooler. the winds will be strongest into the first part of the night around these irish sea coasts and hills. that could cause damage and disruption, particularly in coastal parts, easing a little bit later in the night. rain will have swept across all areas, lingering in the morning to parts of northern scotland with snow on the hills. here is that area of low pressure as we go into wednesday, slowly pushing eastward, will maintain a windy spell of weather. after a brief lull, if you can call it that, the winds will strengthen from the west through the day, some eastern areas, actually, not a bad morning with sunshine around, a few showers here later in the afternoon but frequent showers, longer spells of rain in the west, and the wind restrengthening through the day, so another bout of strong winds especially across parts of wales and southern england, 50—60 mile—an—hour gusts possible again. and believe it or not, some will struggle to get seven or eight degrees.

it will feel chilly out there, some wintriness on the tops of the hills. our area of low pressure gradually migrates further east into thursday, becomes less potent, still a breezy day, especially across the south, here fewer showers, but plenty of showers elsewhere to begin with, some longer spells of rain in parts of scotland and northern england and temperatures recovering just a touch, but overall it will be another fairly cool day. more wet weather and windy weather to come on friday, signs of something warmer into the weekend into next week. take care.

voice-over: this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour, straight after this programme. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. givenjoe biden�*s pride in his irish roots, his determination to be in belfast and dublin to mark the 25th anniversary of northern ireland's good friday peace agreement, it comes as no surprise the us government continues to use its transatlantic leverage to try to ensure the peace holds, despite political tensions in northern ireland.